Panthers wrestling encouraged by good showing at Santa Slam

The Colleyville Heritage wrestling team had a solid showing at the Santa Slam meet before the Christmas break, and coach Waymon Jay said that he has been impressed with what he has seen from his team so far this season.

The Panthers will be traveling to the Houston area next to compete in the Cy Fair Classic starting 10 a.m. on Jan. 2 and Jay said the expectations for the tournament are to continue to improve.

“We just want to go down there and compete,” Jay said. “We'd like to have a couple of kids place. It is going to be a huge tournament. There will probably be 50 kids in each weight class.

Jay said that he had some great individual efforts at the Santa Slam and said he is pleased to see the progress his team is making.

“They competed very well at that tournament,” Jay said. “I would say it was our best tournament of the season so far, so that was good. We had a couple of great performances. Trevor Kleckner (182) wrestled great and beat a state qualifier and lost in the finals to a state placer from last season.

“Travis Richards (220) wound up getting third, and pinned a district opponent from Coppell in his final match, and then Ida Enis (126) got beat the first match, and then fought his way back to a third place finish and worked really hard.”

Jay said he expects a few more strong showings at Cy Ranch as well.

“Amadeo Nuncio was at 170, and he plans on going down to 160,” May said. “We think he'll wrestle better at 160. We also have Thomas Chapman who came out this year. He's wrestled in the past, and he needs to get the rust off of him because he has not wrestled in two years. We expect him to win quite a few matches. Then Todd Ahaus, who has been wrestling at 120, is going to move down to 113. He's a small 120, and he is a fighter. He is great kid.”

May said he believes that things are shaping up well for this season.

“We've got just about every weight class filled out except for 106,” Jay said. “We have a couple of rookies in spots, but for the first time in the three years that I have been there, we have pretty much a full team. Of the 15 classes, 14 of them are filled.”

This story was originally published December 28, 2015 at 9:57 PM with the headline "Panthers wrestling encouraged by good showing at Santa Slam."